Face to Face: A Conversation with the NRA's Marion P. Hammer

April 24, 2011

Let's start with the open carry bill. What gives you the confidence that people won't abuse it by brandishing their firearms openly?

For 94 years in the state of Florida, you could carry openly. The law went on the books in 1893 that said you could carry openly with a license. When we passed the Concealed Weapons Licensing Law in 1987, we repealed that open carry law because no one was using it. People don't want to carry openly. They want to carry concealed. There are those out there now who claim that everybody's going to strap a holster and a gun on their hip and walk up and down Main Street. Well, that's nonsense. That's nothing more than emotional hysterics designed to try to kill a bill.

There are currently 43 states that allow open carry. Georgia, Alabama — you walk in those states and you don't see people walking around carrying a gun openly. They could if they wanted to. They don't have a problem in any of the other states. If they were having problems, you better believe there would be people standing up in committees citing problems in all the states. There just aren't any.

The perception is that the NRA is going after doctors, particularly pediatricians who may have legitimate concerns about children being around firearms. What's your rationale for the bill that you're pushing?

The NRA is not going after anybody. The NRA is trying to protect the privacy rights of gun owners. It's a known fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics supports banning guns. They also encourage pediatricians to tell families who own guns to get rid of them and to tell families that don't own guns not to buy them. So, it's a political agenda that has invaded medical examination rooms. Parents take their children to see pediatricians and doctors for medical care, not to be lectured on safety, not to be lectured by a physician on firearm safety and how to store firearms. They're simply not qualified to do it. The political agenda needs to stop. They are entering that information into medical records on laptop computers, which greatly concerns parents because anything you put in a medical record they fear can be accessed by insurance companies, or the government, and used against them.

Doctors should not ask you how much money you have in your checking account, whether or not you own diamond cuff links or your wife owns a diamond necklace. They shouldn't be asking you if you own guns. In terms of safety information, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association are perfectly capable of printing up safety brocheures and distributing them to doctors to give their patients, so that all patients can get this safety information, if that's really what it's about. And then the patient can decide whether or not to read it or discard it at a later time. But we pay for the time that we're in a doctor's office. We want medical information. We don't want doctors to arbitrarily start talking to us and making us pay for stuff that we have no interest in hearing from them.

Isn't this something that can be settled with the medical community without legislative action. Have you talked with the Florida Medical Association?

We tried. This problem is a growing problem that has been going on for eight or nine years. Six years ago, when headquarters said, "We need to do something about this problem in Florida. Why don't you go ahead and file legislation?" Rather than filing legislation, I went to the FMA and said, "Look. This is a problem. It's primarily pediatricians but we know that they work closely with you and fall under the FMA. Help us here. Put a stop to it. I don't want to file legislation. But if we can't stop it We're not going to have a choice."

That was six years ago. It has continued to get worse. We have now, beginning a couple of weeks ago, sat down with the FMA and we worked on the legislation so that it was some common ground on which we both could stand ... It's not as much as the NRA wanted, but it's more than the FMA wanted, so it's a good compromise.

Let's talk about that third bill, which has drawn some criticism for underming home rule. But you maintain this is a fix for something local government should have been paying attention to for some time.

Absolutely. This bill doesn't change existing law that declares that the Legislature occupies the whole field of regulation of firearms and ammunition. It passed in 1987. It has been on the books for 24 years, and the reason it passed is for uniformity. Firearms are protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Florida Constitutiton. Home rule does not allow local governments to regulate constitutional protections. So the bill was passed for uniformity. In fact, if you look in the existing bill, 790.33, you will find that it's the Uniform Firearms Act.